Free stories!

The Dragon and the Stars won the Aurora Award!

In case you don’t have a copy of 18 F&SF stories from the Chinese diaspora, you can read my story, Dancers With Red Shoes, for free here or on Smashwords or on Amazon.  Please also check out all the “Dragon” excerpts at Eric Choi’s excellent website and then…rock the vote!

Dancers with Red Shoes

By Melissa Yuan-Innes

As an apprentice in the Wizard’s Hospital, Leah Chang was used to a certain amount of noise at night. “The night is a fertile time,” the wizard, Noah, had explained early on. “Many spells, from voodoo to demon-summoning to the simple wart-cure are most powerful at certain hours of darkness.”

Leah yawned. No need for demons tonight. Her ex-boyfriend Andrew, a corps member of the Royal Academy of Magical Ballet, had danced beautifully but then kept Leah up past midnight, doing shots and agonizing over his parents disowning him a month ago. They couldn’t handle him being a ballet dancer, let alone a magical ballet dancer. Leah had poured iced coffee and sympathy down his throat for hours on a muggy July Montreal night. Now she needed sleep and silence. She placed orange foam earplugs in her ears, which worked as well as her imperfect silence spell, and closed her eyes.

Thump!  Th-th-thump, thump, THUMP!

Leah tried some yogic breathing. In. Out.

Thumththumththumpthump…

That was the worst part. It had some sort of rhythm to it. So instead of blocking out random noise, her treacherous mind started analyzing it. She muttered a spell for a breath of wind. Wind was the most responsive element, though also the most fickle. This time, it answered with a small breeze. It smoothed the edge off the heat while creating a bit of white noise. Leah dozed off.

Ththum THUMP!

She jumped out of bed, ran up the curved stairs to Noah’s sanctuary, and banged on the door.

The door opened a crack. She couldn’t see his face, but his voice floated out. “Yes, Leah?”

“Noah, I’m sure you’re working on something important, but for the past few weeks, I’ve hardly slept!  Could you please put a silence spell on it?”

He paused. “Or a sleep spell on you?”

“Ha ha. I don’t need to wake up in a glass coffin with seven dwarves.”

The door opened a bit more. A shaft of light fell on his wrinkled parchment paper face and still-brilliant blue eyes. “Come in quickly, then.”

Leah slipped inside, inhaling the usual tang of smoke and something darker, like licorice and rosemary and blood. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the light. Then her mouth fell open.

At the far end of the room, in front of the extinguished fireplace, between a faded pair of purple velvet armchairs, a pair of amputated feet danced.

The feet did a step-twirl, step-twirl, step-LEAP, pas-de-bourré toward her in red ballet slippers. Leah recoiled. The cross section of ankle bones gleamed white, surrounded by dun-coloured muscle and leathery skin. In contrast, the en pointe shoes shone a brilliant, spotless scarlet. Their ribbons wound around the dead ankles and the empty air above them as if there were still legs to cling to.

The feet smacked down flat on the ground and paused for a second. It was like a drummer’s cymbal, marking the grotesqueness. Then the feet spun away again.

“My God,” Leah said softly.

Noah nodded. “She’s getting more and more impatient, too. I’m not sure what to do with her.”

Leah watched the feet spin, one on the ground, one in the air. “What are they doing here?”

He smiled and shrugged. “You remember Hans Christian Andersen’s story about the girl with red shoes?”

Leah’s forehead pleated. “You mean that girl who kept dancing and dancing in magical red shoes until an executioner chopped her feet off?”  Her eyes bulged. “These are the shoes?  The feet?”

The shoes jumped en pointe, then flexed their toes, as if curtseying.

“That’s disgusting,” she whispered.

“Yes, I myself dislike how Hans turned a young girl’s misfortune into a parable about vanity. You should re-read it, Leah. The girl tricks her foster mother into buying red shoes which are eventually spelled by a ‘soldier’ into endless dancing, until the unfortunate ending you describe. Of course, Hans then focuses on the girl’s returning to the breast of the church thereafter. He never bothers to follow the feet.”

Leah shook her head. “Why do we have to have the feet?”  They danced more slowly now, the left foot still while the right arched up in the air.

“My friend Cartaphilus bequeathed her to me for safekeeping.”

Leah breathed shallowly through her nose. There were some things up with which she could not put. “So what have you been doing with them?”

“Well, I thought she would enjoy staying in a wizard’s chambers, but she seems to be growing impatient. Though I applaud as often as I can, she seems to imagine a more imaginative audience lies beyond my door.”  He shook his head. “I showed her the mundanity of traffic lights and pizza parlours from the window, but then she jumped up to tap-dance on the glass pane.”

Leah’s brow pleated. “Can they see?”

He shrugged. “She dances around obstacles, so she must have some sort of sensory system.”

Great. Seeing-eye feet. After centuries of dancing, they deserved a rest. Leah noticed that Noah called them “she,” as if the girl were still alive, but Leah considered them an abomination disguised as feet. She’d seen a lot in med school before she quit, and even more as a wizard’s apprentice, but this one gave her the ooglies. “Can you do a disanimation spell?”

The red shoes leapt on Leah’s feet. Hard.

Leah yelped. The shoes sprang away before she could snatch them.

Noah said, “I must say, I agree, Leah. Those shoes clearly want to keep on dancing. And Cartaphilus certainly wouldn’t thank me for burying her.”

“The girl’s feet have rights, too!”

“Leah, my dear. After all this time, her feet and the shoes have come to an agreement. It’s called dancing.”

Leah’s toes throbbed. She leaned against Noah’s workbench to rub them, glaring at the red shoes. “Well, why don’t you send them to a dance company?”

He smiled at her. “The human mind is so logical.”

In other words, he agreed.

The red shoes capered around in delight. Leah caught herself smiling before she smothered it. The sooner the shoes were outta here, the better they’d all be off.

In the morning, Leah read up on various dance forms while the shoes beat on the wooden floor, practically flamenco-style. But the only magical dance corps were ballet, jazz, and modern.

When Leah woke Andrew up from his hangover, he connected her with the spokeswoman for the Royal Academy of Magical Ballet. The cool British voice expressed interest in acquiring “such a unique prop. ”  Leah felt a twinge at that as she coaxed the red shoes into a cat carrier.

Continue reading

Leah thought her role would be to stop, drop, and run, but the business manager asked Leah to stay as the shoes’ “guardian.”  More likely he wanted an apprentice wizard on hand in case the slippers started beating a tattoo into his face. Since Leah toes still ached from the shoes’ stomping the night before, she felt some sympathy for that point of view, although she thought the prima ballerina was even more of a pain than the footgear. “Who will look at me if there’s a pair of disembodied feet prancing around?” the diva demanded before storming out.

As if in response, the red shoes began what looked like the pas-de-deux from Swan Lake. Andrew MacMillan rose to join them.

“For God’s sake, Andrew!”  The choreographer tore him away. “We’re watching her form. She doesn’t need a partner now, and when she does, it will be Peter!”

Leah avoided Andrew’s eyes. On-the-job humiliation was par. Humble pie shoved up your nose in front of an ex-girlfriend wizardling was unbearable.

Only the shoes seemed impervious to the tension. They twirled, they arced in the air, they sustained leaps and splits beyond human anatomy. They were amazing, and yet, Leah, the cultural troglodyte, found her mind wandering after fifteen minutes. For her, part of the tension in dance was the effort of the dancers themselves:  the cords bulging in their necks, their breath panting, the grimace forced into a perma-smile. These shoes, no longer limited by muscle and bone, seemed more acrobatic and less miraculous.

Still, the company gave the red shoes and mummified feet a standing ovation. It looked like they had a new prima donna.

Leah scooped up the cat carrier and waved to the business manager. “Break a leg,” she murmured to Andrew before she realized how weird that sounded when the new star had not only broken but severed legs.

“Wait,” he said, turning his hazel eyes on her in a way that she yearned to refuse but knew she wouldn’t. “Could you come see my grandmother after?  She’s been asking for you.”

Leah sucked her teeth. She had to master her air spell, trouble-shoot a love potion, and walk her three-headed dog. But she’d always loved Penny MacMillan, sometimes more than Andrew, so Leah was sunk.

At the end of the rehearsal, the business manager finally decided to lock up the space while the red shoes kept dancing. And dancing. And dancing. At first, Leah had admired their grace and persistence, but now more words came to mind. Insatiable. Voracious. Unstoppable.

***

Andrew ran up all eight flights of stairs at St. Mary’s Hospital despite the murderously muggy heat. Athletes were annoying that way. Leah walked, all the better to enjoy the white paint peeling off the walls and lack of air conditioning. Even at a relatively leisurely pace, she was sweating even before she donned a yellow gowns, latex gloves, and face mask.

Andrew touched his grandmother’s shoulder. “Grammie, I brought you a visitor.”

“Hi, Penny. It’s me, Leah.”  Penny was so scrawny, her collar bones jutted out of her thin blue hospital gown. Leah ignored her milky pupils and fragile, bruised arms, trying to visualize the retired ballerina she remembered, before Penny was crippled by a back injury, cigarettes, and diabetes.

Penny held out her hand and Leah grasped it. Even through the gloves, Penny’s bones were so fragile. Penny’s free hand searched for Andrew, nearly brushing his forehead, but he ducked.

Leah frowned.

Andrew muttered, “MRSA.”

Right. MRSA bacteria. They weren’t supposed to touch skin-to-skin because Penny was infested.

Andrew said, “Want to go for a walk?  We could use your prostheses.”

“They don’t fit any more.”  Even Penny’s voice was weaker. Leah couldn’t help glancing at her leg stumps, barely disguised by the bed sheet. Penny smiled. “Never mind. How are you and Leah and your magical dance troupe?”

“Nothing new,” said Andrew. “Are the physiotherapists–”

At the same moment, Leah said, “Actually–”

Andrew nudged her, but too late. Penny gripped Leah’s hand, drawing her nearer. Her blind eyes were strangely compelling. “Tell me.”

“Nothing,” said Andrew, louder, but Leah was already whispering about the red shoes.

Penny reacted immediately. “I need those shoes.”

Andrew shook his head.

Under the sheet, Penny’s stumps stirred.

***

Leah entered the hospital slowly the next day, inhaling her surroundings. The steamy smell of reconstituted mashed potatoes and feces. The hallway crowded with linen baskets, wheelchairs, dressers with gowns and gloves, and an occasional commode. People crammed into rooms. A man with white wisps of hair, tied to his bed, calling, “Help me. Help me.”  An intravenous machine beeped. A nurse called, “I’m coming, Mrs. Smith!”  Through the window, the St. Joseph’s Oratory’s magnificent copper dome oversaw all of Montreal.

Leah paused in front of the window, trying to ignore the scrabbling in her backpack. She wasn’t related to Mrs. Macmillan. Andy would kill her if he found her here. She wasn’t at all sure she was doing the right thing.

But Penny used to be a ballerina. She used to move. How did it feel to be bed-bound, blind, and bereft?

She deserved one last bit of magic.

Leah tiptoed into room 8311. She shut the door.

Penny said nothing. Her fists clutched her thin white bed sheet, her face alight with hope.

Leah turned away from her as she popped open the cat carrier. The red shoes sprang free and landed gracefully, almost silently, on the tile floor. They flexed and pointed again. Limbering up.

While Leah struggled for words, Penny cocked her ear and held up a finger. Sure enough, someone was racing down the hall toward them. Leah cringed just as Andrew burst through the door. If Leah tackled the shoes and hid them under her body, maybe–

The shoes smacked together in their version of applause before performing what looked like a tap dance.

Leah had to laugh. There was no hiding the most attention-grubbing set of feet in the world.

Andrew’s eyes flashed at her before he turned on his grandmother. “You can’t even see them, Grammie.”

Penny’s hand searched for his. He made no move toward her. Penny’s hand faltered in the air. “I love you, Andy,” she said. “Thank you.”

He grabbed her hand. Leah thought she heard the bones grind together, but Penny didn’t flinch, even as he repeated, louder, “You can’t even see them.”

Penny patted his hand. “But I can hear them. Thank you, my love.”

Leah watched the emotion play across Andrew’s face. He might have been a ballet dancer, but he was a typical het boy in that he hated to talk about nasty things like feelings.

To her surprise, he tore his hand away from his grandmother and whirled toward the shoes, which were dancing ballet-style. The shoes sprang ever-higher, ever greater, in sweeping strokes, as if they could clear the illness and sadness and regret from the air. And Andrew launched himself as a partner to the shoes. He leapt, he spun, he lifted, he jumped off the radiator, he pretended to be a matador tempting the shoes with a wash cloth. He arched into a slow back bend and touched his head down on the arm chair cushion before flipping himself back on to his feet.

There was no name for the type of dance he was doing, and Leah loved him more than she ever had in her life.

Penny clapped. She laughed, gurgled, and began to cough. Her face turned red. She bent at her waist, covering her mouth.

“Grammie?  Should I call a nurse?”

She waved him off. She mastered the cough and sucked in her breath until it was almost normal. “Andy. Please leave me the shoes tonight.”

Leah hunched her shoulders. Andrew shook his head, breathing hard, but said, “I love you, Grammie.”

“Dammit!”  It was the first time Leah had ever heard Penny swear.

“I can’t. It was too much just to bring them today.”  He glanced at Leah, but the accusation had left his eyes. He added, low, “I know how much you miss dancing.”

She snorted. “I miss walking.”

Leah’s fists clenched and unclenched. She wondered if she should leave. The shoes danced up to the windowsill, ever-oblivious.

Penny continued, “I used to make my own decisions. Now I have to ring a bell if I want to loose my own bowels. More often, the nurse doesn’t come in time and I sit in a filthy diaper, sometimes for hours. I have an ulcer on my buttocks that will not heal because of this.”

“Grammie–”

“Your mother brings me geraniums. I hate geraniums.”

“Grandma!”

Leah choked back a laugh, but stopped when Penny enunciated her next words. “I want to live again, Andrew McMillan. Or I don’t want to live at all.”

“Okay. You’re upset. We shouldn’t have brought these. I’ll take them away–”

“No!”  Penny yelled and started coughing again.

“I’ll get your nurse.”  He pressed the bell over and over. No answer. He thrust open the door and dashed into the hallway. “Nurse!  Nurse!”

Penny shook her head, still coughing but somehow conveying exasperation with her bloodshot eyes and hunched shoulders. Leah thumbed the call bell, even though it already beeped and flashed a white light above the bed.

Thump!  Thump!  The red shoes landed on the covers. Penny swung toward the pressure, pushing aside the blankets. Dead flesh and bone rubbed against her stumps.

Leah screamed and tried to pull off the dead feet, but Penny shoved her away. She was shockingly strong for a bedridden old lady, and Leah was more than a little terrified of the feet.

In Leah’s moment of recoil, the red ribbons whipped around Penny’s stump, lashing the old woman’s flesh to the dead girl’s ankles.

Leah shrieked. She grabbed a stainless steel wash bowl. She tried to bash the feet, but they twitched away.

Toward the floor.

It was Penny’s turn to scream through another paroxysm of coughing. Then, with a terrible rictus of a smile, she clambered out of bed after the shoes.

Leah froze, torn between shoving her back on the mattress and helping her out before the shoes dragged her to the floor.

Too late. The shoes began to dance. First a slow step to each side. Penny’s shrunken muscles jerked into action after years of under-use. Surely she must have been in physical agony, but she threw her head back and her chest heaved in an eerie combination of a gasp, a laugh, and a silent cough.

Soon, the red shoes began faster steps, even a spin.

“Grammie!”  Andy bellowed from the door.

He dove at her feet. He snatched a ribbon, but the shoes leaped over his fingers and landed on the bed, kicking Highland dance steps.

Penny nearly tumbled backward before she righted herself. Her back cracked. The snap of bone.

Leah jumped on the bed. A shoe socked her in the solar plexus. She had no air.

Andrew seized his grandmother by the waist. The shoes pummeled him.

Leah couldn’t breathe.

Andrew tried to tear a shoe off her foot.

Leah couldn’t breathe.

A Filipina nurse yelled from the hall, “Room 8311!  Call a doctor!  No, a code!  Is it a seizure?”

Leah’s chest heaved. Her eyes bugged. And just as her diaphragm began to work again and she breathed fresh, sweet air, Penny mouthed “I love you.”  Her eyes rolled up in her sockets. Her body soared into the air, the head and torso lagging at a bizarre angle as the shoes spun her legs, again and again, in a relentless pirouette.

***

They sentenced the shoes to burn.

Now, Leah was not a fan of the shoes. But it was her fault for bringing them to the hospital. If anyone had killed Andrew’s grandmother, it was Leah. The shoes only did what they had always done. They danced.

A large crowd jostled around the bonfire. A few carried signs:  BURN, BABY BURN warring with JUSTICE FOR ANIMATE BEINGS. Leah crossed her arms. A slight breeze blew her hair, but it hardly distracted her from the roar of the fire, which was so hot that it dried out her eyeballs and stung her skin. She had never been present at an execution before.

Noah said nothing. Neither did Andrew. He hadn’t spoken much since his minimum two-week suspension from the dance company. Despite the heat, he wore a long-sleeved black shirt and black cords. She could see the flames reflected in his irises.

Leah hugged her chest. Sweat pricked her arm pits. Why had Penny asked for the shoes?  Was it suicide?  Rebellion?  Euthanasia?

Whatever it was, Leah felt immolated in guilt. But that was her choice and her fate. Not the shoes’.

Leah suddenly remembered her own paternal grandmother, a woman who never said much except “Have you eaten yet?” and offered them Rice Krispies squares. Leah’s grandmother died two years ago from uterine cancer. But once, when Leah visited her in the hospital, Grandma gestured at the deaf Chinese troupe dancing on TV and said, “Ah. So beautiful. You see how they use their hands?  Chinese people dance with their hands. They make circles. Circles mean harmony.”

Where was the harmony in this execution?  Sure, a rough, eye for an eye kind of retribution, but not true justice.

Grandma Chang probably wouldn’t have seen the harmony in Leah’s life, either:  dropping out of med school, dating a gweilo (foreigner), and training to become a wizard. But Leah had to keep following her heart or she’d implode.

A limousine nudged its way up the hill. A flunky rushed to open the door. The black-hooded executioner stepped out, holding the red shoes firmly around each foot.

A free strand of ribbon lashed at his eyes. He jerked his head back. The assistant had to snatch the ribbons out of the air while another man tied their ends in knots. The executioner stood, impassive, until they finished. Then he marched to the fire, careful not to hasten his pace. He tossed the shoes at the flames. “May you rest at last.”

The last thing these shoes wanted was rest.

As the executioner opened his hands, the red shoes launched themselves off his palms. The flames reached for the shoes, but Leah muttered a spell and the winds blew the flames and the smoke toward the audience. When their eyes refocused, the red shoes had vanished. Noah turned on Leah. She flinched but stood, ready to face the consequences.

THE END

Copyright 2011, Melissa Yuan-Innes

Originally appeared in The Dragon and the Stars, 2010